La Tête in Nice, France:

headbldng.jpg
Courtesy of Nevdon Jamgochian.

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Courtesy of Flickr.

The English word “head” comes from Proto-Germanic khaubuthan, which came from the Sanskrit word kaput. Which is now the German word for finished, destroyed, etc.

In an odd coincidence (since we’re talking heads, kaputs, and Aryans), the first use of “heads will roll” is attributed to Adolf Hitler. From the OED:

1930 Daily Herald 26 Sept. 1/1 Giving evidence, Hitler declared..‘If our movement is victorious there will be a revolutionary tribunal which will punish the crimes of November 1918. Then decapitated heads will roll in the sand.’

Kaput kaputs!

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

9 replies on “Head Space”

  4. Dude. Kaputt is a loan word in German. Get your etymology straight:

    http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term…

    kaput 1895, “finished, worn out, dead,” from Ger. kaputt, probably a misunderstanding of the phrase capot machen, a partial translation of Fr. faire capot, a phrase meaning “lose all the tricks in piquet,” an obsolete card game, from Fr. capot, lit. “cover, bonnet.”

    Also, modern German for “head” is “Kopf”, which has a clear etymological similarity, and “caput” is Latin for “head”. So German “Kaputt” is connected via Latin via French. It’s a little like French “loyal” vs. “legal”, which ultimately have the same roots, except “legal” was borrowed directly from Latin, whereas “loyal” evolved with the language.

  6. Oh dear, so many etymologically challenged folks.

    First of all, the English word “head” and the German word “Haupt” together both descend from a Proto-Germanic form “haubudan” or “haubudam” (spoken maybe around AD 100 and before).

    The Proto-Germanic word descends from an Indo-European word “kaputom” or “kauputom” (spoken maybe 1000 to 2000 BC, though this is arguable). Now, this root is also the origin of Latin word “caput” meaning “head” (whence our terms “capital, capitol, chief” and the French “chef,” and indirectly of Spanish “cabeza,” etc.).

    Now, the German word “kaputt” is itself borrowed from the French expression “e^tre capot,” which is a 19th century idiom that basically means “to loose everything.” Our use of it English actually comes via Yiddish, which is closely related to German. In French the term “capot” itself means “hood” of a car (but it does also derive from Latin “caput”).

    The German word “Kopf,” by contrast, is not related to any of these *at all*. It is not a Proto-Germanic or Indo-European word at all (it’s probably originally Etruscan or something, but it’s unknown); it was borrowed around AD 800 from Latin “cuppa” (meaning “cup”) into Old High German, originally “Kopp” then later “Kopf.” The Germanic peoples often referred to “heads” as “cups” or “bowls” because the skulls of enemies used to be used as eating vessels (cf. the Scandinavians still say “skaal” when drinking; that word is related to the word for “skull”).

  8. Not only that, but how would Proto-Germanic have had the opportunity to borrow anything from Sanskrit? Was there a lot of cultural mingling between the two? Proto-Germanic was spoken, say, 500 BC.

    Sanskrit and P-G are sister languages. (Or cousins-once-removed.)

    And actually, I don’t think there even was a Sanskrit when Proto-Germanic was spoken.

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